Egyptian Mummy's Elaborate Hairstyle Revealed in 3D

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Nearly 2,000 years ago, at a time when Egypt was under the
control of the Roman Empire, a young woman with an elaborate
hairstyle was laid to rest only yards away from a king's pyramid,
researchers report.

She was 5 feet 2 inches in height, around age 20 when she died,
and was buried in a decorated coffin whose face is gilded with
gold. A nearby
pyramid, at a site called Hawara, was built about 2 millennia
before her lifetime. The location of her burial is known from
archival notes.

High-resolution CT scans reveal that, before she was buried, her
hair was dressed in an elaborate hairstyle.

"The
mummy's hair is readily appreciable, with longer strands at
the middle of the scalp drawn back into twists or plaits that
were then wound into a tutulus, or chignon at the vertex (crown)
of the head," writes a research team in a paper published
recently in the journal RSNA RadioGraphics. They note that it was
a popular hairstyle at the time, which may have been inspired by
a Roman empress, Faustina I, who lived in the second century.
[ See
Photos of Egyptian Mummy's Reconstruction ]

Today, thanks to research and reconstruction work that includes
high-resolution CT scans, anthropological analysis, 3D printing
and facial reconstruction drawing, this woman, along with two
other mummies, are being brought back to life. Their
three-dimensional faces and hair, carefully reconstructed by
professional forensic artist Victoria Lywood, of John Abbott
College, are set to be revealed tomorrow (Jan. 25) at the Redpath
Museum at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

In pictures sent to LiveScience the reconstructions appear
vividly real in every aspect, from the tone of their muscles to
the color and style of their hair. It looks like they could be
people living today.

"They are three human
Egyptian mummies that have been trapped in the manner they
held when laid to rest nearly 2,000 years ago. And now we can
reveal what they might have looked like," the team writes in a
press release. All three mummies were donated to the
Redpath Museum in the 19th century.

While two scientific papers have recently been published on them,
and their reconstructed faces are set to be unveiled, there are
still plenty of mysteries for Egyptologists to tackle. For
instance, when researchers scanned the woman they found three
puncture marks, each about an eighth of an inch (3-4 millimeters)
across, on the right side of her abdominal wall, wounds that may
have killed her, leading to the question — how did she get
them?

"These wounds were believed to have occurred either before or
shortly after death," the researchers write in their
RadioGraphics paper, "although these CT findings are far from
conclusive, it is possible that the punctures are related to the
cause of death."

The 'matron'

Another mummy, dubbed the "white-haired matron," is of a woman
who lived long enough to see her hair go gray, likely passing
away sometime between the ages of 30 and 50. Radiocarbon dating
indicates that she lived late in the time of Roman rule (A.D.
230-380), when Christianity was growing in Egypt and
mummification was soon to go out of style. At 5 foot 3 inches,
she was relatively tall for her time, and museum records indicate
that she was found somewhere in the ancient
Egyptian city of Thebes (modern-day Luxor).

She suffered from a problem quite common in ancient Egypt — bad,
and rather painful, teeth. "Thecondition of the teeth of (the
mummy) was poor," the team writes in the RadioGraphics paper,
noting that she was missing several of them and that a large
cavity, between two teeth, was visible along with several
abscesses.

Theban male

The third reconstructed mummy lived a few centuries earlier than
the other two, at a time when a dynasty of Greek kings ruled
Egypt. If he and the matron could talk, they could sympathize
with each other’s dental problems. [ Mummy
Melodrama: 9 Secrets of Otzi the Iceman ]

The
5-foot-4-inch male mummy had numerous cavities, including one
that caused a sinus infection, possibly killing him. His
condition was so bad that in his final days he had a form of
linen "packing," dipped in medicine, inserted into one of his
cavities. According to records he also was found in Thebes, with
CT scans showing that he died relatively young, likely in his 20s
or early 30s.

Western University researcher Andrew Wade, a leading member of
the team, said at a recent Egyptology symposium in Toronto that
the development of high-resolution CT scans has played a key role
in advancing the study of Egyptian mummies, including these three
individuals, unveiling tiny details that help bring their past to
life.

"The high spatial and contrast resolution of the last decade of
CT studies of mummies has allowed us to examine the
paleo-anatomic minutiae (of mummies)," he said.